25 may. 2006

Why are "syllabics" in English lame? That is, why do I think them lame? Most of the time?

For a measure to be relevant, it has got to be perceptible in some sense. A Gestalt. It can't just be a number of something. Nobody I know of can hear Marianne Moore's syllabics. It's something that worked for her, in terms of producing the texts that she produced, but it isn't that relevant to the reception side of the equation. If it weren't in syllabics, it would still be what it is, which is prose divided up into lines of more or less equal lengths. It isn't meaningful in rhythmic terms at all.

Lame in the sense of limping along lamely. it's a yardstick, not a true measure.

Syllabics could work, of course. Very short lines would make the pattern more perceptible, but I'm not really convinced. It's like a course in the catalogue that's never really offered, but is theoretically part of the curriculum. Someone could find a use for its someday, but it's not that relevant. Don't even get me started on teaching children to write "cinquains."

Páginas

Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."